New Doctor Who

From a Doctor Who perspective, the only thing you really need to know about Torchwood is that Captain Jack is the leader. Anything else that you would need to know will be explained in S3.

 

As far as loneliness, the Doctor never had this problem before the Great Time War. Now that there are no other Time Lords, he's lonely.

I've said it before, but Catherine Tate was excellent in The Runaway Bride. I couldn't stand Donna Noble at the beginning, but, by the end, I wanted Donna to go with him.

Well, there's a reason inside the show and a reason outside the show.

Outside the show, if the Doctor does something in the 37th century on some alien planet with aliens that nobody cares about, then nobody cares and nobody's watching. If, however, the Doctor is on modern day Earth dealing with an alien invasion, then people will watch.

Inside the show, the Doctor does have adventures on places other than Earth, but we don't see most of them on-screen, only in the various books that are written. In S3's Utopia, there is a statement made that the Doctor clearly agrees with that I think comes closest to explaining his interest in Earth.

Because he's heterosexual and girls are pretty.

Especially Martha Jones, his companion in S3.

The Doctor has spoken of being a father, and I think we have to assume that Gallifreyans, and thus, Time Lords, procreate the way humans do. For those who, lurkers and non-lurkers alike, know what Lungbarrow is, let me just say that I don't believe that book to be canon. If it's good enough for RTD to dismiss certain things as not being canon (half-human anyone?), so can I.

 

There's so many things I love about S3. One thing that I haven't mentioned in this thread is how things that we saw in the first 2 seasons came to fruition in S3, showing how much RTD planned these 3 seasons out.

1. Rose bringing Captain Jack to life at the end of Parting of the Ways. I always wondered why the Doctor abandoned Jack.

2. The Doctor losing his hand in the fight with the Sycorax in Christmas Invasion.

3. The Face of Boe promising a secret in New Earth and delivering it in Gridlock and realizing what it means in Utopia.

4. The sheer brilliance of Human Nature/Family of Blood, which is a fantastic story all by itself. I think HN/FoB is the best Doctor Who story ever, and one of the best things I've ever seen on television. Not only is HN/FoB fantastic, but the Chameleon Arch is introduced in such a way that if Utopia had been the first time we'd seen it, it would have been a cheap trick, a Deus Ex Machina device. By telling an entire story about it being used, it wasn't a cheap trick. Of course, HN/FoB also showed us The Fury of the Time Lord, which makes us consider the Doctor in a different light.

5. The cheap time trick in Smith and Jones wasn't a cheap time trick when the Master went back 18 months before the election, which would have been sometime in S2. The Master would have started influencing events leading to his election no later than Love&Monsters.

Here's an idea I had today. Maybe the reason the TARDIS went to the Age of Steel Universe was to avoid a collision with itself when it was taking the Master back to Earth after he stole it.

6. The brilliance of John Simm and the Master. The Master was written perfectly and Simm was a fantastic casting choice.

Captain Jack becomes The Face of Boe.

Don't mention this to Pete, btw. I think it left him :BangHead:.

 

I was poking around the thread to see what I'd written about S4 and I came across this from Matt.

QFT&CA.

If it weren't for the final 2 stories, I think I would like S4 much better. Also, I still think my idea for the S4 finale would have been a better story.

 

The 11th Doctor has been announced.

 

There is a fan theory that states that as Time Lords get older, each successive regeneration makes them look younger, but I think that theory is nonsense. I just think that the new Doctor Who team thinks that Matt Smith is the right guy.

I have my reservations about whether a younger actor will have the requisite skills to show the range for the role that Eccleston and Tennant had, but there's a reason that Steven Moffat and company are in show business and I'm not. :smilewinkgrin:

 

I think most Who fans had no problem with 5 having celery on his coat. Peter Davison had some weak stories, but he was still pretty good, especially after following Tom Baker, who'd been in the role for 7 years.

Most Who fans have a real problem with Colin Baker's Doctor, the 6th, and his hideous coat and his smug, arrogant attitude, and his trying to kill Peri in his first story, not to mention his overall terrible stories. But, I think most of those fans understand that the problem isn't with Colin Baker, but with TPTB that wanted him to play the Doctor that way. I've heard more than once that his audio stories are very good and really showcase how good he could have been as the Doctor if he'd been allowed to play the part like he wanted to.

I don't think The Mighty Moff and company are going to take Doctor Who into the same sort of territory that killed the show in the mid 80s.

 

I have an answer for one of the most asked questions in this thread. Why did Eccleston leave the show after just 1 season?

I can't find it now, but on Skiffy there was a post that explained this. RTD, either in a Who Confidential or somewhere else, said that they didn't know whether there was going to be a 2nd season of Doctor Who or not, so they only signed Eccleston to a 1 year contract.

There you have it. One of life's greatest mysteries explained. :smilewinkgrin:

 

Not until 2010.

There will be 3 Doctor Who specials in 2009. I don't believe the dates have been announced, but the latest speculation I saw was they would be shown in April, August and Christmas.